


Unquiet

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Gaslighting, M/M, Poltergeists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 02:12:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2530211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>A few hours before dawn Steve woke up already in the process of running to Bucky's room, shield in hand. He hesitated at the closed door, and only then registered that the sound that woke him had been a strangely prolonged shattering of glass.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unquiet

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Беспокойный](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3271292) by [neun_geschichten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neun_geschichten/pseuds/neun_geschichten), [WTF_Starbucks_Team](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WTF_Starbucks_Team/pseuds/WTF_Starbucks_Team)



> Many thanks to Gwyneth for beta, and to Iulia, Rubynye, and feanor_in_leather_pants for encouraging this all along!
> 
> Written for my h/c bingo card's "poltergeist" square.

The new SHIELD--which Steve was, on balance, only somewhat more wary of than he'd been of the old SHIELD--wanted to keep Bucky under observation for a while after Steve brought him back to New York. Steve would have objected, but Bucky himself seemed to think it was for the best, and it occurred to Steve that he didn't actually have anywhere for himself, let alone Bucky, to live. So when Bucky said his strictly temporarily goodbye with a small, ironic salute before following Coulson into the secure facility, Steve went straight to the teammate most likely to be able to solve his housing problem: Clint.

Tony had offered him an entire floor of Avengers Tower. Steve had slept a night or two there from time to time, but the place felt like a space-age hotel, cavernous as a hangar around him, and Steve had never entirely accepted the idea of being perpetually monitored by an artificial intelligence created by a Stark. He couldn't get comfortable there, and he couldn't imagine Bucky feeling at home either.

Clint, on the other hand, owned an apartment building in Brooklyn. He didn't have any vacancies ("Uh," Clint rubbed the back of his neck, "probably because I never evict anybody?") but he had a good sense of his neighborhood and was able to come up with a list of available apartments nearby. There wasn't much out there that was actually suitable for what Steve and Bucky would need, but eventually Steve walked through a two-bedroom apartment with a reasonable set of modern amenities that didn't feel completely foreign and was available for immediate occupancy. Clint surveyed it with a sniper's eye and assured Steve that it contained enough blind spots for Bucky to be comfortable, and suggested that Bucky would like the smaller bedroom, which had only one narrow window looking out onto the blank wall of the neighboring building, with no fire escape to make the window an obvious vulnerability. 

"Okay," Steve said, smiling at the property manager. "I'll take it."

She seemed to want to object somehow, but what she finally said was, "You're Captain America."

Steve nodded slowly, wondering if that realization had distracted her from the actual matter at hand. "I am. I'm from Brooklyn, originally. I'm looking to move back here."

"Yeah," she said, looking around Bucky's future bedroom while Clint perched on the narrow sill of the window, further examining the sight lines. "Well. If this is what you want, you can probably handle it."

She sounded oddly like Natasha had when Steve had insisted that he was going to bring Bucky all the way home with him. Steve had no idea what this woman could possibly know about what he intended to do with the apartment that made her so dubious about renting it to him, but it only firmed his resolve.

Steve offered her a polite smile. "I'm sure I can."

* * *

Steve started furnishing and decorating the apartment as soon as he had the keys, moving in as many of his own possessions as he could track down and buying new things to fill the gaps. He made the best guesses he could in setting up Bucky's room, and when he'd set up all the standard furniture, he turned to the question of what to put on the walls. Everywhere else in the apartment he put a mix of photographs, reproductions of pictures from his and Bucky's life before well-mixed with newer ones, plus art prints and posters. He deliberated over Bucky's room for twelve days and then, the day before Bucky was due to come home, he hung up a couple of framed photographs--one Natasha had snapped of Steve and Bucky arguing during the long trip home, another of Bucky with his sisters--and three sketches Steve had done of street scenes. One was from up in Manhattan near Avengers Tower, another, from memory, showed their old street, and one he'd done just a few days before of the block Clint's building was on. 

When he brought Bucky home, Steve trailed Bucky as he explored the apartment--opening drawers, examining everything, learning his way around so that he'd never step wrong or make a sound if he didn't want to. Steve mostly didn't bother to explain anything; Bucky knew what he was seeing. If he had questions, he'd ask. Still, when Bucky stepped into the room Steve had set up for him, Steve said, "I thought you'd like this room, but if you want to trade, we can."

Bucky shook his head slightly, going straight to the window to examine the same lines of sight Clint had scrutinized, jumping up to perch on the sill in the same way Clint had. Steve looked forward to introducing the two of them to each other; he'd asked, but Clint swore he didn't have any of the kind of history with Bucky that Natasha did. 

When Bucky put his feet back on the ground he swept a brief glance over the rest of the room and then zeroed in on the framed photos, which hung on the wall near the door, across from the bed. Steve kept perfectly still, almost holding his breath, while Bucky walked over to study them. He stared for a long time at the photograph of the Barnes siblings, but when he raised his hand it was to touch the frame of the color photo of himself and Steve. 

"Widow took this?" 

Steve nodded.

The corners of Bucky's mouth tucked up into a small but definite smile, and Steve had to look away to hide a wide grin. 

"Yeah," Bucky said. "This room's fine."

* * *

A couple of hours before dawn Steve woke up already in the process of running to Bucky's room, shield in hand. He hesitated at the closed door, and only then registered that the sound that woke him had been a strangely prolonged shattering of glass--not just the window being broken, but something that went on for several seconds. There was silence now. When Steve held his own breath and listened he could hear someone breathing fast on the other side of the door, but no sounds of movement, let alone a struggle. Bucky hadn't gone out the window, and no one else had come in.

"Bucky?" Steve tapped gently at the door.

"Sorry," Bucky said, and Steve set his shield down to one side of the door before he opened it.

Bucky was standing barefoot near the bed, dressed in soft pants and a purple Hawkeye t-shirt, which Steve suspected Clint had slipped into his dresser sometime in the last two weeks. The window was intact; it was only when Steve's gaze swept the rest of the room that Steve realized the glass had been shattered in all the picture frames on the walls. There was broken glass all over the hardwood floor.

Steve reached over and switched on the overhead light, and Bucky flinched from the brightness. Steve looked away from him, surveying the room again; light reflected off the scattered glass on the floor.

"I'm sorry," Bucky said again, looking around himself. "It wasn't..." 

Steve looked at the frames still hanging on the walls. Shards of glass had been driven into both of the photographs, tearing them. Steve felt a little sick at that evidence of... what? What had driven him to do that? Bucky didn't look angry or violent now. He looked bewildered.

Steve focused on Bucky again. Bucky shook his head slightly, frowning. "I don't know why I did that. I didn't mean to. I'll clean it up. I'm sorry, Steve."

"It's all right," Steve said firmly. "It's just glass. Stay there, okay? Let me get a broom."

Bucky shook his head more fiercely. "It's my mess. I'll clean it up. Go back to bed."

"Buck," Steve said gently, his eyes catching on Bucky's bare feet on the hardwood floor, and the glass all around. "You don't have to--"

"It's my mess," Bucky interrupted sharply. "It's mine to clean up. I'm sorry I woke you. I didn't... I didn't mean to."

Steve shut his mouth, nodded, and backed out the door, leaving it open so that Bucky could fetch the broom himself. Steve lay awake in his own bed, listening to Bucky cleaning up and then to the silence in the next room. Steve didn't sleep again that night, and something about the quality of the silence next door told him that Bucky didn't either. 

In the morning, Steve found the broken glass in a paper grocery bag in the trash, along with all five frames and the nails that Steve had used to hang them. The pictures had been removed from each of the frames, and Steve took that as a heartening sign: Bucky still wanted the pictures, even if having them on the walls had been somehow too much. Steve hadn't been entirely wrong.

* * *

Bucky spent much of the day on the couch or at the kitchen table with a book in one hand and a pen in the other; the SHIELD therapists and his orientation sessions had both left him with plenty to study and work on, apparently. Steve sat a little way away and sketched Bucky, and it all felt exactly like being seventeen years old, unable to keep his eyes off Bucky while Bucky had his eyes on his books. Bucky had always outdone Steve in school for more reasons than just Steve's frequent illnesses.

When Steve started to get restless--and when he noticed Bucky's frown of concentration on his work darkening into a scowl--he suggested getting out of the apartment. Bucky immediately agreed. 

Steve set their path in the direction of Clint's building first, just to show Bucky where it was. Bucky didn't react like they were being watched from a sniper vantage, so Steve figured Clint either wasn't home or was busy with something. Either way, now wasn't the time to introduce Bucky to him. They walked on, instead, aiming for Prospect Park.

They didn't talk much, which Steve didn't find surprising. Bucky hadn't been particularly chatty when Steve and Sam and Natasha caught up with him, or through the process of helping him finish that last mission against Hydra and the trip home after. It had reminded Steve a lot of the way Bucky had been in their first weeks with the Howling Commandos, after his ordeal in Zola's clutches. 

Steve thought, watching him look around Brooklyn, that Bucky looked a little better now. Quiet and serious and watchful, but not as hollow and haunted. Maybe that time with SHIELD had done him some good. Steve could allow them that much credit.

Bucky caught him watching while they were standing on a street corner--or rather, turned his head and looked back, since he'd probably been perfectly aware of the direction of Steve's gaze all along. Bucky hadn't really needed to catch him at it since about 1932, but he wasn't usually obvious about returning the attention.

"Looking for something?" Bucky asked, a faint smile playing across his lips. He looked tired--he couldn't have gotten much sleep last night, if any--but amusement lightened his face a little now.

Steve tilted his head. "Just looking."

Bucky shook his head and looked away again, but the faint smile remained. "No accounting for taste, I guess."

That sounded an awful lot like permission--not just the tacit permission they'd always given each other for something they never acknowledged, but the first step toward actually saying something about this. That whole idea had Steve staring hard at sidewalks and storefronts for the next half mile, though nearly every time he looked Bucky's way, Bucky was watching him. Steve was considering asking Bucky's question right back when he looked over for the hundredth time and caught Bucky's attention flickering down to his foot, a faint displeased expression crossing his face as he set it down firmly, his stride unaffected.

Steve stopped short. "What's wrong with your foot, Buck?"

Bucky stopped as well, meeting Steve's gaze with a closed, intent expression--deciding whether to lie or what lie to tell, Steve was nearly certain. Finally Bucky shook his head and started walking again. "Just thinking about Dugan, back before we got captured that first time--he just about made a religion of everybody keeping their feet dry. Never got over that, even when I didn't remember why. Always--"

Steve stopped again, not resisting the impulse to grab Bucky's arm this time--the right one, warm and muscular under his hand, because Bucky had put himself at Steve's left. The calculation went by before they'd stopped moving: Bucky's foot was wet and he didn't like the feeling of it--why was Bucky's foot wet? Why was _wet_ the part of this situation Bucky was trying to direct Steve's attention to? By the time Steve spoke, he only had to ask, "Bucky, why is your foot bleeding?"

But of course he knew that, too, and the exasperated look on Bucky's face told him he shouldn't have bothered to ask that question, either. "I stepped on some glass last night, cleaning up. I thought I had it padded well enough, but I sprung a leak about a mile back." 

Steve opened his mouth and Bucky jumped in with, "It doesn't hurt that bad, it'll heal, and my boot was gonna be full of blood even if we turned around right then, so there was no point saying anything."

"Bucky, if you're hurt--"

"I wanted to keep walking," Bucky interrupted, like he knew he had a winning argument. "I wanted to keep walking with you."

Steve opened his mouth and shut it again without making a sound, then looked back the way they'd come, pointing to a drug store a couple of blocks back. "I'm gonna buy some more bandages. Will you stop and fix your foot up again before we head back?"

"What if I say no?" Bucky asked, eyes slightly narrowed. The question wasn't defiant, just curious. Bucky wanted to know what would happen.

Steve shrugged. "Then I'll sit on the curb for a while trying to convince you to sit down with me, and we'll see who's the stubbornest these days."

Bucky snorted and turned back toward the drug store. "You're still the favorite there, pal. By a mile."

Steve smiled and let Bucky have the last word. It was only when they were both sitting down on the curb that it occurred to Steve that Bucky had cut himself cleaning up--not when he originally broke the glass. He could have done the breaking with his metal hand, but to get to all the frames quickly enough to make the sound of shattering one continuous noise like it had been, he would have had to run, and he'd been barefoot. If he'd been in that big a hurry, he wouldn't have bothered to be careful not to step on glass, but when Steve came in Bucky had been standing in a clear space by the bed, and his feet had been fine. 

Steve was trying to think of a way to put his sense of unease into words when Bucky pulled his scarlet-soaked foot out of his boot. At that sight, everything went out of Steve's head except the problem right in front of him.

* * *

It was only a little past midnight when Steve startled awake that night, but his reaction was the same: grabbing his shield and bolting for Bucky's room. The sound that woke him this time was Bucky's voice, sounding shaky but furious as he snarled, "Stop it, stop it, stop--"

Steve jerked the door open without hesitating this time, catching Bucky with his hands full of torn paper, standing in the midst of a drift of it like snow. A few small pieces fluttered down as Steve watched.

Bucky had the same stricken look on his face again, but he said only, "Sorry, don't--I'm sorry."

Steve took a cautious step inside, only half aware that he was still holding his shield. He felt a chill as he looked at the scraps of paper--most of them were covered with Bucky's handwriting: his homework from the day before, or one of the notebooks that were among the few possessions he'd brought with him from SHIELD to the apartment two days before. 

When Steve looked at Bucky again his shoulders jerked, his whole upper body spasming. Steve felt the motion in the pit of his own stomach; he knew exactly what Bucky looked like when he was trying not to gag. Bucky opened his hands, letting the scraps of paper he'd held float down to the floor, and Steve recognized the fragments before they hit the ground: photographs, one in color, one in black and white. Steve didn't bother looking for his own sketches, knowing that they would be among the wrack.

"I'm sorry," Bucky repeated in a hollow whisper. "Steve, I didn't mean to, I--this stuff is important, I don't know why I did this. I won't--I didn't mean to."

"I know," Steve said, as gently as he could despite the bewildered hurt in his chest, feeling like a fresh bruise. "It's okay, Buck. It's just--" _stuff_ , he wanted to say, but it wasn't. It was Bucky's work, his own work, it was the faces of people Bucky loved, or at least people who loved Bucky. 

"I'll clean it up," Bucky said quietly. "Least I can't hurt myself on it this time."

Steve noticed, then, that Bucky was wearing a pair of sneakers with his pajamas this time. He'd planned ahead for glass, but it had only been paper.

"Yeah," Steve said quietly. "Buck, if you--if you need anything--"

"Just the broom," Bucky said. "I'll get it. Go back to sleep, Steve."

Steve studied Bucky's face. He looked exhausted, but that was all.

Steve nodded and turned away.

* * *

In the morning, Bucky sat down at the kitchen table with a new pad of paper, the books he'd been working from the day before, and a grimly determined expression Steve had seen for the first time when he was about six years old. Bucky was clearly exhausted after a second sleepless night, and he wouldn't look at Steve at all.

Steve kept out of Bucky's way, sitting out of sight on the couch. He thought about texting Sam for advice about Bucky and the strange middle of the night rages--if that was what they were. Bucky hadn't seemed angry; both nights he'd said he didn't know why he did it, and he'd been confused more than anything. Was some latent Hydra programming still driving him? If it was, why such innocuous targets? Was he dissociating and punishing himself for some other reason?

Sam wasn't going to have an answer for that, and it wasn't even really Steve's place to ask. Bucky had a therapist; he'd gotten help from SHIELD, and tomorrow he was scheduled to go back and check in. If he felt he needed more help before then, he had the contact information required to ask for it. Some broken things, a few nights' lost sleep, maybe that was just an adjustment. Steve had certainly smashed enough stuff getting used to his new body; maybe this was Bucky getting used to freedom.

Steve set himself sternly to the book he was reading, and spent some unknown time letting his eyes move without comprehension over the page while he listened for any sound from Bucky in the kitchen. After a while Bucky started grumbling and thumping his books, and Steve shook his head and began to read for real with that reassuring background noise. 

It was close to lunchtime when Steve got up, stretched, and realized he hadn't heard a sound from Bucky in a while. Well, if he went into the kitchen now he could plausibly be looking for food, and maybe the quiet just meant that Bucky wasn't angry at his work anymore. Steve made enough noise for Bucky to hear him coming as he headed toward the kitchen doorway, but he stopped on the threshold. Bucky was sitting with a vantage on the door, which meant Steve could see his face. Bucky was very nearly asleep. 

He had his chin propped on his right hand, left hand dexterously holding the pen. As Steve watched, he wrote a few words and then paused, eyes sinking nearly closed, before he forced them open, frowned faintly at the page, and then wrote a little more with his eyes already sinking again. Steve's presence in the doorway either went unnoticed or wasn't enough to wake him all the way up. 

Steve backed away silently. Maybe Bucky could catch a nap at the kitchen table; maybe there was something about trying to sleep in his own bed that set him off, and the kitchen felt safer for him. He seemed comfortable enough there. If he could rest in the sunlit kitchen better than in a dark bedroom, Steve would leave him there all day.

Steve headed toward the bathroom instead, but he'd barely closed the door behind him before he heard a huge smashing clatter from the kitchen and bolted back out. The sounds of smashing continued until he reached the doorway again, when they trailed off into a last settling of metal and broken glass.

Bucky was on his feet, standing in front of the refrigerator with one of the narrow wire shelves from the freezer in his hand. The rest of the shelves, along with every container that had been inside the refrigerator or freezer, was now strewn across the kitchen floor. The plastic drawers inside had been pulled out and broken, and half the floor was covered with the mess of broken glass and plastic and wasted food. Steve felt an instinctive sick lurch at all that food gone in a second of senseless destruction.

" _Bucky_ ," Steve said, his voice coming out harsh.

Bucky winced and dropped the shelf he held onto the rest. He didn't look up, and he didn't say a word of apology or explanation this time. He just stood there in the middle of the mess, looking down at the wreckage around his feet. There was a spreading puddle of orange juice and milk, seeping out from under everything else.

"Buck," Steve said more gently, coming into the kitchen. "Are you okay?"

Something clattered to the ground, and Steve watched Bucky's pen bounce off a fallen wire shelf and roll away under the table. He'd had his pen gripped in his left hand the entire time. 

_Single-handed_ , Steve thought, and tried to calculate how many seconds had passed while the sounds went on, how quickly Bucky would have had to move to commit all this destruction with only his right hand.

 _At least that means his arm's not doing all of this on autopilot_ , Steve thought, and then thought of Bucky's left hand, clenched around the pen, simply smashing away. 

"Bucky," Steve said. He was standing right at the edge of the mess now, close enough to reach out and touch Bucky if he dared to. "What happened?"

Bucky shook his head and still didn't look at Steve. "You should send me back."

Steve did grab Bucky then--by the left arm, because it was closer--and jerked him around to face Steve, setting off a minor cascade as the stuff piled against Bucky's shins was displaced. "I'm not sending you--hell, Bucky, you're bleeding."

There was a fresh red impact mark on Bucky's cheek, something that would darken into a bruise if it didn't just heal away without a trace, with a dripping cut at the center. He must have yanked something right into his face, hard enough to break the skin. Steve glanced down at Bucky's right arm, and saw two more cuts there, maybe from flying glass. 

"You should send me back," Bucky repeated, eyes lowered. "SHIELD has containment facilities."

"I'm not sending you anywhere," Steve repeated fiercely. "Come here, sit down and let me look at that."

Bucky moved when Steve tugged him toward the kitchen table, limp as a rag doll under Steve's grip, which was almost scarier than any of this. Steve sat him back down and turned away to get the first aid kit Clint had insisted he should have under the sink ("Never know when you're gonna need more Band-Aids," Clint had said, and since he'd been wearing six of them that Steve could see at the time, Steve hadn't argued). He pulled out the disinfecting wipes in their row of little packets. 

Bucky didn't argue with him or even flinch while Steve cleaned the cut on his face, and Steve said quietly, "If you _want_ to go back to SHIELD--if you don't want to be here, or with me, or--"

"I want to be where you are," Bucky said sharply, showing more animation than he had yet. "I just don't--"

"If you want to be here, then you stay here," Steve said firmly. "We'll order takeout for lunch and clean this up before it gets here. I'm not sending you away over a few messes. I'm not sending you away _ever_ , Buck. I just got you back."

"You got _something_ back," Bucky muttered, and Steve didn't dignify that with a response, even as he wondered. What had Hydra done to Bucky, to make him react like this now? 

"Do you have any idea what sets this off?" Steve asked softly, trying to keep his voice neutral.

Bucky shook his head, then stilled as Steve pressed a gauze pad to his cheek. "Just--when I'm about to fall asleep. You know when you're not sleeping yet, but you're sort of drifting? And sometimes you feel yourself falling and jerk awake, and sometimes you just drift away and then you're asleep, but for a little while sometimes you're still there, just... floating."

Steve nodded.

Bucky shrugged. "I float and then I crash."

* * *

Bucky stayed close to him for the rest of the day, which might have been gratifying if Steve didn't think it was mostly because Bucky was trying to stave off another incident by letting Steve keep him awake. They cleaned up the kitchen together--Bucky kept trying to salvage food out of the mess and Steve had to overcome his own instincts to do the same, telling him it was okay to throw everything out and start over. Never mind that he'd stocked the fridge from scratch a couple of weeks ago and most of the containers were nearly full. 

They took a break when the Thai food showed up, stuck the leftovers in the empty refrigerator, and went back to cleaning. After that they went grocery shopping, Bucky quietly trailing Steve through the store, hands in pockets, head ducked and hat tugged down to shield his face. Once they were back home Bucky wouldn't settle to anything, jumping up to pace or stretch every few minutes. Keeping himself awake, though he hadn't slept the last two nights and was obviously dragging.

"Did you sleep better at SHIELD?" Steve asked, when Bucky came back from prowling the edges of the room.

Bucky shrugged. "I didn't break shit when I dozed off. Got a few hours a night."

Field conditions were different, maybe, but Steve could swear Bucky had slept the night through whenever he had the chance before they came back to New York. In temporary shelters, in a hotel room, twice in the back of a van, even on the flight over, Steve had watched Bucky sleep whenever he had the chance. 

"What if I keep watch?" Steve asked, and Bucky gave him a sharp look. Clearly that wasn't the question he'd been expecting.

"Your room's not working out well," Steve pointed out. "How about you bed down on the couch, and I'll stay out here with you? Do you think that might help?"

Bucky shrugged, looking around vaguely--trying to guess what he might break next?--and finally said, "Least you can stop me if I go off, then."

"Sure," Steve said, and realized that he was almost hoping for it. If he could see what was happening, maybe he could figure out how to really help. "I'll get some blankets, okay?"

Bucky nodded and headed toward the bathroom while Steve went and got a pillow and blanket from his own bed instead of Bucky's. Steve didn't remark on the fact that Bucky put his boots back on with his pajamas, and Bucky didn't say anything about where the bedding came from. He settled himself in and Steve shut off the lights and came to sit on the floor with his back to the couch, listening and waiting.

For a long time Bucky lay absolutely still, not making a sound at all, which meant he was still too tense and alert to sleep. Steve kept quiet and didn't move, taking easy, shallow breaths himself and keeping his attention directed everywhere but at Bucky. He was still learning the usual pattern of night sounds in the building and the neighborhood, and there was plenty to hear when he paid attention.

He felt the cushions shift as Bucky squirmed behind him, getting comfortable, and he forced himself to keep breathing evenly as he focused on Bucky again. Sure enough, his faintly audible breathing had fallen into the same rhythm as Steve's. Steve allowed himself a little smile, but a few seconds later Bucky jerked--Steve stiffened, bracing--and then went still. His breath had cut off, and sounded shaky and too-deep when it started again. He'd just startled back from the edge of sleep.

Steve went back to breathing evenly and not paying too much attention to Bucky, and the pattern repeated, startling him the first time, depressing him the next, and then simply fulfilling expectation over and over again for the next two hours. Bucky couldn't let himself sleep, even here, even with Steve watching over him. Another incident would have been a mercy, but Bucky wasn't letting himself risk it.

Finally Bucky said, "Steve?"

"Yeah," Steve said, trying not to sound as tired or heartsick as he felt. 

"You mind if I put the TV on?" Bucky said, curling up as he said it, pressing into one corner of the couch with the blanket still wrapped around him.

"Sounds good to me," Steve said, scooting up to sit squarely in the middle of the couch and offering the remote to Bucky. 

By dawn Bucky had uncurled enough to lean against Steve's side, but his body never lost its waiting tension. Steve stayed alert and on watch himself. He had promised Bucky. He wouldn't leave him now.

* * *

"Run and then breakfast," Steve said finally, when it was properly morning and they had about five hours to kill before Bucky was due at SHIELD. "Or breakfast and then run?"

Bucky pushed himself upright, turned off the TV decisively, and said, "Run first."

Steve nodded and hauled himself off the couch. He hesitated for a second after Bucky shut his bedroom door--waiting for the sound of a disaster from the other side--and then shook himself into motion. Bucky was standing at the door in running gear, including a long-sleeved t-shirt and a glove to cover his left hand, when Steve came out, and he fell in behind Steve when he led the way outside.

They both started running with the stern mechanical effort of a forced march, but Steve felt his body waking up--healing, warming, shaking off the long night--with every step. Beside him, Bucky seemed to find his stride as well, and when Steve stole glances over at him, he looked, if not happy or energized, at least more relaxed than he'd been for the last few days. 

"Foot's okay?" Steve asked, the first time he considered turning toward home.

"Foot's fine," Bucky said, shoving past Steve to keep running east, and that was the end of that discussion.

* * *

Bucky tripped him on the stairs to beat him back to the door of their apartment. Steve figured his bitten tongue and banged knees were a small price to pay for the sight of Bucky throwing a smug little grin over his shoulder as he unlocked the door. 

"Just for that, you're cooking breakfast," Steve said, giving him a shove toward the kitchen.

Bucky huffed and said, "Like I was gonna let you cook? I guess you can push the button on the coffeemaker if you want."

With that provocation Steve also insisted on making the toast while Bucky fried eggs and bacon, and they ate standing at the counter, Bucky still bouncing a little on his heels from time to time. Steve could see that the run had warmed him up, though, and he wasn't in any danger of falling asleep right now. 

"You want first shower?" Steve offered. 

Bucky shook his head. "I want first not having to smell you anymore, get outta my kitchen."

"Oh it's your kitchen now," Steve said, but he was grinning too hard to even pretend to be offended, just shied out of the way when Bucky snapped a dishtowel at him and hit the shower. He washed up quickly, his mind filling up with thoughts of things Bucky might destroy out there while Steve was shut away from him, but everything was quiet when Steve stepped out the bathroom door with a towel wrapped around him. He stopped to listen in the hallway and heard Bucky singing under his breath and the splash and clink of him washing dishes. 

Steve shook his head at himself and called out, "Shower's free," as he headed into his own room to get dressed.

He heard Bucky call back an acknowledgement, and a moment later heard him heading into the bathroom. Steve put on casual clothes. He hadn't told Bucky he was coming with him to SHIELD today, so he wouldn't tip his hand just yet by putting on the clothes he'd want to be wearing if he had to go toe to toe with Coulson over getting Bucky some kind of effective help. He pulled on jeans and a t-shirt, plus a hoodie Natasha had picked out for him that almost didn't make him feel like he was undercover as someone else when he wore it. He'd just finished tying his shoes when he heard the crash in the bathroom.

There was no sensation of surprise or question of what was happening. The only thing that crossed his mind was _Bucky's probably barefoot_. Steve didn't even stop to knock or call out before he shouldered through the door. Bucky was naked, dripping wet, pounding his metal fist down again and again on the broken pieces of the mirror that had shattered all over the bathroom sink and counter.

Steve didn't see whether there was glass underfoot, but it hardly mattered; Bucky was vulnerable everywhere and the glass was bound to ricochet if he kept smashing it like that. Steve lunged in and grabbed Bucky around the middle, hauling him off his feet and back against Steve's chest. Bucky arched back in blind resistance, whacking the back of his head hard against Steve's face. Steve let Bucky's momentum throw him further back without letting up his grip, staggering back a couple of steps and going down hard on the hallway floor with Bucky still held against him. 

The jolt of hitting the floor--or at least hitting Steve--made Bucky go still, and then limp, his head falling back against Steve's shoulder. He was a warm, damp weight blanketing Steve's body, and under any other circumstances Steve might have furtively enjoyed the sensation. Now Steve looked down the length of Bucky's legs splayed over his, and noted distantly that at least there wasn't any blood on his feet. 

"I didn't fucking mean to do that," Bucky said, sounding nothing but exhausted. "I was having a good day, and I didn't--I didn't. _I didn't_."

"I know, Buck," Steve said. He tilted his own head back at the wet sound of his own voice, finally noticing the warm trickle over his lips. Bucky squirmed in his grip, turning to sit up on his lap, and his face hardened into grim lines as he touched his fingers to Steve's mouth, tentatively and then more firmly as he wiped away the blood. Steve's eye was drawn irresistibly to the vivid redness of it smeared across Bucky's fingers.

"I hurt you," Bucky said quietly. "Stevie, I can't stay here anymore. I gotta go back."

Steve could have pointed out that a bloodied nose wasn't any worse than he and Bucky had done to each other in a hundred scuffles when they were kids, or that it was Steve's fault for grabbing him from behind and the head butt had been half-accidental. Bucky would have done a lot worse if he'd actually been trying to fight. 

Bucky was right, though. He needed help, and it was obvious that he was only getting worse here with Steve. 

"I know," Steve said instead, keeping his grip tight on Bucky long enough to make his point. "Just as long as you don't think you're going alone."

* * *

They were hours early for Bucky's scheduled check-in, but no one made them wait. A couple of doctors who'd treated Bucky during his first stay met them at the doors, along with an armed escort team who fell back at a look from Steve and trailed quietly out of effective range. Bucky and his doctors went into a ground-floor office and shut the door firmly behind them. Steve leaned against the doorjamb and studiously did not try to hear what was happening on the other side of the door. The guards drifted further down the hall. No one else came near them.

Steve was almost asleep--standing up, with his eyes open--when he heard the door knob turn and backed up a couple of steps. Bucky was the one standing there when the door opened, and he stopped on the threshold like he hadn't expected Steve to still be waiting when he came back out. It had only been something like twenty minutes.

Steve flicked a glance toward the doctors behind him, both of whom looked calm, and then focused firmly on Bucky as he said, "Well?"

"We're gonna try something," Bucky said, without stepping through or looking back. "Docs think it's no good trying to figure out anything else until I can get some sleep, so we've been figuring out how to do that."

Steve nodded. "So? What's the plan?"

Bucky studied him in silence, his grim look easing into something Steve could read as exasperation.

"I already told you," Steve said firmly. "You're not going anywhere alone. If you can't be at home with me, I'll be here with you, but I'm not sending you away or leaving you behind."

"You've got better things to do," Bucky tried, but Steve had been able to identify that tone as a token protest since long before the war. 

"Nothing I could be doing right now is more important than this, so you can either tell me to stop invading your privacy or you can tell me the plan."

"Your room is ready, Sergeant Barnes," one of the doctors waiting behind Bucky said. "Why don't we all go upstairs? Commander Rogers, you could be a help here." 

Bucky actually rolled his eyes, which probably meant that the doctor had just gone over his head and Bucky had been trying to insist Steve shouldn't help with whatever it was.

"Glad to," Steve said, and Bucky shook his head but stepped out of the doorway, heading back to the elevators. Steve fell in behind him, leaving the doctors and guards to trail after them. If Bucky didn't actually know where they were going someone would probably say so eventually.

* * *

Bucky's room, to Steve's pleasant surprise, was actually a room and not a cell, on the eleventh floor of the building. One wall was all windows. Steve knew that they were a dark mirrored blue from the other side, so the buildings nearby wouldn't offer a clear vantage point.

"I slept here before," Bucky explained. "The glass is the Hulk-proof stuff, so I'm not getting out and no one's firing through it."

Steve nodded, and his eye settled on the bed, which immediately took up all his attention. The frame of the bed was heavy steel, bolted to the floor, and the bed sported heavy restraints for arms and legs, plus softer ones to cross the body.

"Bucky," Steve said warily.

"Steve, it's this or drugs, and this is what I picked," Bucky said. "Long as nothing's holding my head down I don't really mind restraints that much."

"This is what we could use your assistance with," one of the doctors added, reminding Steve of her--their--presence. "Sergeant Barnes will need to be monitored while he's in restraints--his bones will break before the restraints do, so if he panics or begins to fight and can't be calmed down, we need someone here to make the judgment call of whether to sedate him or free him. Whoever keeps watch needs to be able to make that decision in a fraction of a second, and to deal with the consequences of that decision until backup can arrive."

"It also needs to be someone Sergeant Barnes trusts enough to sleep in their presence," the second doctor--Steve thought he was the psychologist--added, pointedly in Bucky's direction rather than Steve's.

"That's me, then," Steve agreed, while Bucky aimed a scowl--embarrassed and irritated but not genuinely resisting--in the general direction of the windows. "Somebody want to show me how these things work?"

Bucky glanced at the bed. "I know these, I can do it. Everybody else can clear out."

The psychologist nodded and headed for the door, but the woman doctor hesitated, saying, "The sedative option--"

Bucky's mouth went tight, and Steve intervened. "Bucky said he'd rather this than drugs, so no drugs. If he needs to get up and move I'll let him up and then we'll try it again when he's ready. Forcing the issue's not going to help him sleep, is it?"

The woman tilted her head in a conciliatory gesture and said, "You've got another twenty-four hours before I start talking about last resorts, then. Good luck, Sergeant."

"Thanks," Bucky said, wryly but without bitterness. Steve concluded that Bucky did actually like his doctors as well as he liked anyone these days; he would have taken the same tone with Sam or Natasha.

When they were alone, Bucky walked over to the door; he turned a deadbolt lock and then pressed a button on a small panel by the door. The overhead lights dimmed by a small but perceptible degree, and the light from the windows seemed diminished as well, like a cloud had passed over the sun. The sky outside was the same deep blue as it had been before, though. 

"Sunset protocol," Bucky explained, walking over to a small chest of drawers. "Dims the light gradually for about twenty minutes, opaques the windows at the same time. It's supposed to help me get sleepy, but I don't know how much help I actually need with that."

"Good idea anyway," Steve agreed, and then caught the folded clothes Bucky threw at him.

"Pajamas are also an important part of good sleep hygiene," Bucky informed him, right before he pulled his own shirt off. 

"I thought I was supposed to be on watch," Steve said as Bucky pulled on a plain blue t-shirt and crouched to untie his boots. 

Bucky looked up. "You've gotten, what, six hours of sleep total the last three nights? If you're gonna insist on being here, I'm gonna insist on you putting your head down. Not like you won't wake up when I freak out, you've been fast enough every other time and you've never even been in the same room when it happens."

Bucky looked down sharply as he said that last, and Steve knew it wasn't because he needed to look at his hands to get his boots off. 

"You think that has something to do with it?" Steve asked, dropping the pajamas Bucky had thrown to him on the bed and beginning to undress. 

Bucky's shoulders jerked in a sharp shrug. He didn't look up. "Probably not a coincidence. If I can just combine that with actually sleeping I'll be getting somewhere."

Steve let Bucky have the last word on that and didn't bother asking why Bucky hadn't asked Steve to stay close sooner. They could have that argument later. 

Bucky finished changing and came over, throwing himself down on the bed, framed between the restraints. Steve had to tug his clothes out from under Bucky, turning away to set them down before he turned back. The light was noticeably dimmed now, bathing the room in a warm twilight glow. 

"Ankles first," Bucky directed, pushing up on his elbows as he pressed his right ankle against the restraint. 

They were electromagnetic shackles, a simple red button on the outside releasing the hold. Steve glanced at the others, noting the location of the button on each and working out the most efficient route to release all four limb restraints if necessary. Right wrist first, then legs, left arm last, since Bucky would have a hard time breaking that. Steve opened the restraint and let Bucky move his ankle into it; the interior surface was padded and smooth, and the restraint was six inches wide, though Bucky's struggles could still concentrate force if he got the right angle--the top edge was the likeliest spot. 

Steve pushed away the image of Bucky's leg snapping if he was too slow to release the restraint and eased the shackle closed, pressing the green button to activate the magnetic clamp. Bucky flexed against it automatically and gave a small acknowledging grunt, which Steve interpreted as satisfaction. Bucky sagged a little where he lay, reassured by the strength of the restraint. 

"You didn't use these before," Steve observed as he stepped around the bed to open the left ankle restraint. Glancing down past it, he noticed the small bright metal shavings still lying on the floor around the bolt where the bedframe was secured to the floor. This bed had only been installed today, maybe just minutes ago.

"Nah, just had a plain cot in here," Bucky agreed. "I mostly slept on the floor, though." Bucky jerked his chin toward the dimming window, and Steve could picture him easily enough, lying pressed up to the glass, wrapped in a single blanket, cheek resting on his left arm since it wouldn't go numb under the weight overnight.

Steve nodded in understanding and opened the left wrist shackle. The interior of this one was different--not padded, and there were electrical contact points visible. "Buck? You know what this is?"

Bucky glanced down at it, and his gaze fixed for a moment before he looked away. "Yeah. Didn't know they had one of these. Good, though."

"What is it?" 

Bucky still hadn't placed his left arm in the restraint. 

"Disables the arm if I put enough pressure on it," Bucky said. "Keeps me from breaking my shoulder, mostly. Maybe also the bedframe."

Steve's eye traced over the shining metal and the scuffed red star of Bucky's shoulder. There must still be living bone under there, and Steve didn't want to imagine what would happen if Bucky broke that.

"Are you okay with this?" Three points of restraint would be plenty to keep Bucky still, or they could disable this one somehow...

"It's fine," Bucky said, but he sat up instead of putting his arm in the restraint. Steve dropped his hands from it and shifted his weight back, but Bucky shook his head. "Come here."

Steve stepped in. Bucky tugged on Steve's t-shirt with his metal fingers--they matched, Steve noticed. He and Bucky were wearing the same uniform for the first time in decades. 

Steve followed Bucky's grip, perching on the edge of the bed, his hip pressed up against Bucky's. Bucky pulled him gently but inexorably closer until Steve put both arms around him, holding on tight.

Bucky tucked his face in against the side of Steve's neck, and Steve ran a hand up and down Bucky's spine, waiting for the strength of Bucky's grip to relax. Sooner or later Bucky would go limp and still against him...

Bucky's lips brushed Steve's throat in a distinct, deliberate movement, and Steve went very still.

Bucky didn't let up his grip, but he shifted his head on Steve's shoulder, so that his mouth wasn't touching Steve as he said, "My shrink tells me that life is what happens while you're busy trying to get well enough to get on with your life."

Steve wondered if Bucky could feel his heart racing. He thought he could feel Bucky's thudding under his hand, but maybe it was only an echo of his own blood pounding against his skin.

"Buck?" It wasn't a surprise, exactly. Bucky would have told him a long time ago--a whole lifetime ago--if it was hopeless, so Steve had gone right back to hoping as soon as he knew Bucky was alive. In the last few days, and before, out in the field with Bucky, it had seemed like Bucky was getting close to saying something. Steve just hadn't thought he would say something now, like this.

On the other hand, a week ago Sam had said something a lot like what Bucky had just said, about not waiting for the perfect moment after all this time.

"Come here," Bucky said, picking his head up and still not loosening his grip on Steve, so all he had to do was turn his head and he was, after all this time, kissing Bucky. 

Bucky was kissing him, maybe. Steve didn't think he'd be patient enough on his own to keep it this gentle, their lips moving enough to make a point without rushing into anything. Steve was the one who licked at Bucky's mouth until it opened, and Steve's tongue slipped inside, tasting him. Bucky sighed into the kiss, letting Steve in, and then his whole body jerked in Steve's arms.

Steve pulled back enough to meet Bucky's wide eyes, and he smiled a little. "Nope. Wide awake."

Bucky smiled back, looking shaky and more exhausted than ever. "You sure? Maybe we should check."

Steve obligingly leaned in and kissed him again, biting his lower lip instead of pinching him. When Bucky jerked this time it was to push further into the kiss, his tongue pressing against Steve's, his teeth scraping Steve's lip in irresistible retaliation. By the time they came up for air again Steve was leaning back over Bucky's legs, letting Bucky hold him up because he couldn't let go of Bucky to bear his own weight. 

The room was nearly dark now, though the gradual lowering of the light meant Steve's eyes had adjusted well enough to see Bucky's steady gaze and the smile on his open mouth. 

"If we're gonna keep doing this, I'm turning up the lights and getting your legs free," Steve said. 

Bucky tugged him upright and shook his head, leaning in for another hug. "'M tired. I just--Doc was giving me shit about chickening out, that was my big goal for my first few days out, but then I was crazier than I thought I was gonna be, and I didn't want to push it. But I can't fucking scare you off, so fine."

Steve laughed a little. "Shooting me didn't scare me off, Buck. Breaking things won't either. Come on, lie down."

He made himself let go and gave Bucky a little shove. Bucky sighed and lay back, settling his left arm into the shackle. Steve closed it, then walked around the bed to secure his right hand. 

"Pillow's okay?" Steve asked, when Bucky was locked in place. Bucky nodded.

"Blanket first," Bucky said. "Then the straps."

Steve nodded and pulled a blanket over him, covering his feet but leaving his hands out, and then pulled up the softer restraints to hold him down at thighs and hips and chest. It should take him long enough to break those that Steve would be able to get his extremities free before he had enough leverage to really hurt himself.

"And where am I sleeping?" Steve asked, looking around. 

Bucky yawned. "Your pick, you can help hold me down or you can sleep on the floor."

Steve hesitated, then climbed up on the head of the bed to sit beside Bucky's pillow, leaning against the wall with his legs folded over Bucky's left arm, toes tucked under the strap across his hips. "How's that?"

"C'mere," Bucky said, turning his head on the pillow and scooting toward Steve the few inches he could. Steve shifted over until Bucky could press his forehead against Steve's hip, and he heard Bucky sigh, his whole body seeming to melt a little into the mattress.

"Buck?" Steve said softly, but Bucky was already asleep.

* * *

Steve meant to stay awake and watch over Bucky's sleep, but the next time he opened his eyes the room was bright again, the windows clear and showing an indeterminate daylight. His hand was resting on Bucky's head, fingers threaded through his hair, and Bucky was saying, "Steve? Steve, let me up."

Steve sprang off the bed and stabbed at the red button on the nearest restraint--left wrist, that was backward, should have gone for the other side--and Bucky was laughing.

Steve froze. Bucky didn't stop. He was laughing-- _giggling_ , almost, shaking his left hand free to splay metal fingers across his face, mouth open as he went on laughing.

"Oh God, your _face_ ," Bucky managed. "Stevie, fuck, I really am gonna piss myself now, stop looking like that."

Steve snorted and tugged the soft restraints free before unlocking Bucky's ankles, and by then Bucky had reached over and opened the right wrist restraint with his left hand. He rolled all the way off the bed, smacked a quick kiss against Steve's mouth, and then sauntered to the bathroom. 

Steve stood there watching him until Bucky closed the bathroom door behind him, and then he finally shook himself into motion. He picked up his clothes from where he'd tossed them on the floor and fished his phone from his pocket to find that it was late afternoon. He and Bucky had slept about six hours, which qualified as a solid night's sleep for either of them. No wonder Bucky was feeling better.

Bucky emerged from the bathroom when Steve was halfway through changing back into his own clothes, and Bucky stopped and gave Steve a long, lingering up and down look that made Steve intensely conscious that something had changed this morning. Looking was allowed now, looking openly and on purpose and with a real possibility of more than looking in the foreseeable future. Steve looked back, letting himself see Bucky's familiar body in an unfamiliar light.

Something buzzed on top of the chest of drawers, and Bucky made a small irritated noise and scrabbled around for his phone. Steve felt a flush rise belatedly on his cheeks at the reminder that there was a world outside of him and Bucky. He finished getting dressed, watching from the corner of his eye as Bucky checked his messages.

"Docs want me back," Bucky said, when Steve was fully clothed. Bucky started taking his pajamas off, and Steve made himself watch slightly more discreetly. 

"I got about forty-five minutes," Bucky said as he dropped his pants, and Steve glanced toward the bed, considering what they could manage in forty-five minutes and then rejected the whole notion--not here, under inevitable surveillance, in a bed with restraints attached.

"Yeah," Bucky agreed, when Steve looked back to him. "Come down to the cafeteria with me and get something to eat before I go get my brain checked?"

"Happy to," Steve said, and leaned against the wall to watch while Bucky finished getting dressed.

* * *

Forty-three minutes later Bucky pushed him gently but firmly out the front doors. 

"I'm gonna see if I can fix it so I can come home tonight," Bucky promised. Just Bucky calling the apartment _home_ made Steve feel better about having to go back there without him for a while. "If some guys show up with welding gear and want to set up restraints in my room, let 'em in, okay?"

"As long as they've got SHIELD ID," Steve allowed, and Bucky made a face that suggested he had the same set of awful mental images Steve did, considering the other possibilities.

"Yeah," Bucky said. "Check that. Go on, I'll call if I can't come home--you can sleep over again, okay?"

Steve nodded, squeezed Bucky's hand in lieu of a too-public kiss, and walked away.

* * *

The apartment was too quiet and still. It had only been three days since Bucky set foot in it for the first time, but the weeks Steve had spent here alone, preparing for Bucky's arrival, already felt like a whole other era of Steve's life. The rooms seemed to echo around him. Steve shook his head at himself and went into the bathroom to clean up the glass, which Steve had insisted on leaving for later in his hurry to get Bucky to SHIELD and whatever help they could provide.

He went into the kitchen to fetch a brush and a paper bag, and tried not to think too much about how the help SHIELD had provided had mostly been a high room and reinforced restraints. Maybe Bucky would have felt safer at Avengers Tower after all--maybe Steve's nostalgia for Brooklyn had made him choose a place where Bucky couldn't be safe. Maybe Steve had put Bucky through all of this unnecessarily, and if they'd just gone to Manhattan Bucky would feel fine, watched over by JARVIS and locked away in a high tower with windows no one could break.

Steve resolved to ask as he started sweeping the shattered and pulverized glass into the paper bag. He happened to look up at the medicine cabinet as he did, and stopped, frowning.

The mirror had occupied the two doors of the wide medicine cabinet. Metal framing surrounded the place where the mirror had been, and there wasn't a single shard of glass left in the frame, not even at the corners. That would have taken either time--breaking out all the stray pieces that stayed put after a first blow--or enormous force. But Steve had heard the single crash of the shattering mirror and came through the door only seconds later, and the thin wood composite that backed the mirror wasn't so much as dented. Steve punched the surface lightly, testing, and it cracked around his fist. Bucky had already been pounding on the fallen shards of glass when Steve came in; how had he cleanly broken every piece out of the frame before that? How had he done it without breaking the flimsy backing?

For an act of involuntary, uncontrollable violence, this had been strangely precise.

Steve kept turning it over in his mind as he cleaned up, but he couldn't draw any conclusions from it. He knew Bucky hadn't wanted to do this. It was genuinely beyond his control. If Bucky was going out of control in strangely exact ways because of his programming... 

Steve didn't know what that might mean. He settled for making sure he'd gotten all the glass out of everything, rinsing their toothbrushes carefully and wiping down the counter and floor. He was checking the hallway to see if he'd dripped blood anywhere when someone knocked.

Steve got up and went over to the front door, and when he checked through the peephole, he had a clear view of a SHIELD employee badge--Hector Gray, Facilities & Fleet. Steve opened the door on Hector and three of his colleagues--all in sturdy work clothes and matching badges, two of them holding toolboxes, one holding a laptop case. 

"Commander Rogers?" Hector said, holding up a work order with Bucky's signature--the same old carefully-trained copperplate Steve had always known--at the bottom. "We're here to see if we can do structurally sound restraints for Sergeant Barnes."

* * *

Bucky returned home shortly after Hector and his men had packed up their tools and departed, leaving behind some new wiring and a freshly reinforced floor in the bedroom as well as the steel-framed bed. Steve made it up with the same pillows and blankets Bucky had curled up in on the couch the night before and dragged in an armchair. There was no backup here; he ought to be more careful to stay awake and look after Bucky.

"Stevie, I made it," Bucky yelled from the front door. Steve rested his forehead against the back of the armchair for an instant, hiding his wide smile.

"In here, Buck," Steve yelled back, turning his head as he did to see Bucky already in the doorway. 

"Okay?" Steve asked, and Bucky nodded, glancing around the room without his eyes settling for long on anything.

"Come on," Bucky said. "It's not bedtime yet."

Steve left Bucky's room and trailed him out to the living room, where Bucky was already curled up on the couch with the remote in his hand. 

"How was it?" Steve asked, sitting down close beside him. 

Bucky leaned into him. "Nobody knows what the fuck is going on and it's too soon to diagnose anything so they don't really know how to try to fix it except to make sure I keep sleeping."

Steve nodded, watching Bucky navigate through a menu on the screen to Steve's saved list of nature documentaries. 

"Sleep hygiene?" Steve asked.

"Sleep hygiene," Bucky agreed, squirming a little closer to Steve as he hit the button for the first episode of _Cosmos_.

* * *

"Steve," Bucky protested when Steve had him all tucked in under his blanket and assorted restraints and then sat down in the chair beside him. " _Steve_ , come on, I'm gonna get cold. Come here."

"I'll go turn up the heat if you're cold, Buck," Steve said firmly. "Go to sleep, I'm right here."

"I can't see you," Bucky protested.

"You'll have your eyes closed, it won't matter--oh God," Steve stopped short, the words echoing in his ears. "Which one of our mothers did I just turn into?"

Bucky snorted. "Both of them. Stevie, come on."

"I've already had a night's sleep today, Buck, I'm not gonna be able to go back to sleep just yet. Might as well be properly on watch."

Steve stood, though, shifting the chair so that he faced the head of the bed and was sitting directly beside Bucky's right hand. He interlaced his fingers with Bucky's and leaned his cheek against the back of Bucky's hand. "Better?"

Bucky gave a showy sigh. "Maybe."

"If you're not ready to go to sleep, we can go back out to the couch."

Bucky shook his head and squeezed Steve's fingers. "This is okay. Just gotta kick a little."

Steve turned his head and kissed Bucky's knuckles. "Kick as hard as you want, Buck. I'm here."

"You say that now," Bucky mumbled, but he already sounded drowsy. "'S cold though, isn't it?"

Steve shivered a little as Bucky said it, and Bucky's fingers tightened on his. Maybe it was the power of suggestion, but Steve was starting to feel uncomfortably cold, though the apartment had seemed warm enough a moment ago.

"I really will go turn up the heat if you want," Steve offered.

"Come keep me warm," Bucky insisted. "'M cold."

"Well, I'm cold too, it's not gonna help that much," Steve pointed out. "I'll get some more blankets, all right?"

"You're not supposed to leave me," Bucky said, still sleepily complaining. "S'posed to stay with me."

"I'll be fast," Steve said, because he could feel Bucky starting to shiver; he was shifting against his restraints, trying to curl up under his inadequate blanket, and it reminded Steve of too many cold encampments, too many times watching Bucky and the rest of his men shiver in their bedrolls. Steve would swear he felt the cold every bit as much as Bucky did this time, though. The room was like an icebox all of a sudden. 

He wondered vaguely if the men installing the bed--and reinforcing the floor and rewiring the electrical to support it--had somehow interfered with the heating system. Blankets first, though. He could get Bucky warm now and figure out the problem once he was sure Bucky was okay.

Steve stood, squeezing Bucky's hand again, and leaned over him to look him in the eye in the not-quite-complete darkness.

"Buck? I'll be right back, just hang on for me for a minute, all right?"

Bucky huffed, but opened his eyes a little and nodded. "Why is it so fucking cold in here?"

"I don't know. I'll fix it," Steve promised. "One minute." He ducked down for a brief kiss and then darted toward the door.

He nearly stumbled going over the threshold; the hallway felt like stepping into a summer day compared to the chill of Bucky's room. He hurried down the hall toward his own room, but he'd only made it halfway there when Bucky's bedroom door slammed shut behind him, stopping him in his tracks.

"Bucky?" Steve called, walking back toward the door. 

It couldn't have been Bucky. Bucky couldn't have slammed the door, and he definitely couldn't have made the room turn cold enough to drive Steve to step outside and leave him alone. 

If there was anyone else in the apartment, one of them would have noticed. Bucky would never have let Steve put him in restraints if he wasn't sure they were alone and secure. If it wasn't Bucky, and there was no one else here--

" _No_ ," Bucky yelled, more angry than scared, and Steve turned and ran to the living room, where he'd left his shield propped against the back of the couch. He barreled back toward the sound of Bucky's yelling, smashing through the door without bothering to try the knob.

It was freezing and dark on the other side, but Steve could see Bucky struggling against his bonds--and as Steve watched, Bucky's head snapped to the side as though something invisible had struck him, and his shouts cut off abruptly.

" _Bucky!_ " Steve charged forward, swinging his shield where it had to be, above Bucky. The air was ice-cold there. Steve couldn't see anything, but he caught the faint but definite sensation of his shield stopping _something_ , halting some vibration in the cold space over Bucky's bed.

And then Steve felt the attention of the cold place--thing--settle on him. 

He threw himself flat over Bucky, pulling the shield up to cover both their heads, and he felt it pounce on him. It was slithery-cold down his back, heavy like water, like the weight of a river, an ocean on top of him, but it was sharp, too, stinging like a hailstorm falling on his back from his heels to the edge of the shield. He braced himself to keep the pressure of it from crushing Bucky under him, and it occurred to him that Bucky wasn't moving at all at the same time that the thing decided to concentrate its force, trying to squeeze under the shield like a knife blade. 

Steve pushed back with the shield, scything the edge through the place where the thing was most present, twisting to take a few solid swings at it. 

"I know what you are now," Steve said sharply, summoning up all the command he could put into his voice. "I won't let you hurt him again. _Get out_."

The weight and the cold vanished almost before he'd stopped speaking, and Steve let the shield slip from his grip to clang on the floor. He knelt up over Bucky, slapping at the restraints with shaking hands, freeing his wrists and jerking the soft restraints open.

"We're getting out of here," Steve declared, and only then realized that Bucky was lying utterly still. "Buck? Did it hurt you?"

Bucky pushed up slowly to sit and shook his head slightly, working his jaw like he'd been slapped. 

Steve leaned in and kissed him fiercely, his whole body feeling light and shaky with relief. They were safe--Bucky was safe. For now, at least. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left you."

Bucky shook his head again, and Steve shifted backward and freed his ankles, then got up and turned on the lights. "Come on, put some clothes on, we're not staying here tonight."

"Steve," Bucky said as Steve turned to pick up his shield, and Steve turned to look at him.

"Your clothes," Bucky said. "They're all ripped down the back."

It wasn't just a lingering chill in the room, then. Steve reached behind himself and felt the tatters of his shirt, long rents down the backs of his jeans.

"Okay," Steve said. "You first, then you come to my room with me. I'm not letting you out of my sight again."

Bucky nodded and a moment later he actually moved, going to his dresser and changing quickly into his usual going-outside clothes, dark jeans and a few layers of dark shirts. He followed quietly when Steve led the way to his own bedroom, and Steve turned on every light as he went. He handed off his shield to Bucky when he needed his hands free, and Bucky stood perfectly still, looking down at it as though he'd never seen it before. 

Steve lay his clothes out on the bed, torn sides up, and snapped a picture of them before he grabbed new clothes and got dressed again. He herded Bucky out, not letting him hand the shield back, and they went out and got their boots on. Steve slung on the shield harness as well, and dropped the shield into place on his back before he grabbed his keys and wallet and checked that he had his phone.

"You got everything?" Steve said. "I don't know when we can come back here."

Bucky looked back toward his room, and Steve said. "I'll come with you. We'll take whatever you need."

Bucky nodded decisively, and Steve followed right on his heels, staying close enough to touch--close enough to cover him if he needed it--while Bucky went to the little nightstand that had been returned to its place by his new bed. Bucky pulled out the drawer and then reached inside, groping for something. There was a small sound of tape giving way, and Bucky came up with an envelope, masking tape still attached around the edges. Steve was close enough to see when Bucky opened it up to peek inside: he saw himself and Bucky in a color photograph, carefully reassembled from a dozen torn pieces. There was another photograph behind it, and three larger sheets of paper folded to fit the envelope, all painstakingly taped together.

"Okay," Bucky said, tucking the envelope into the inside pocket of his jacket. "Now we can go."

Steve grabbed Bucky's hand and led him out of the apartment, leaving every light in the place blazing and locking the door behind them. 

He didn't want to go back to SHIELD, and he certainly didn't want to go to Tony, much less to an anonymous hotel or anywhere less familiar. Steve turned them toward Clint's building, and they were halfway there when Bucky said, "Steve?"

Steve stopped short, turning to face Bucky. He still looked a little blank and stunned.

"Did you," Bucky said. His mouth worked as he struggled for words, and Steve waited.

"Did you--Steve, did you see something?" Bucky asked. "Was I really in restraints?"

Steve's mouth fell open, and Bucky started to look away before Steve got both hands onto his shoulders, holding on tight. "Yes, I saw it. Yes, you were in restraints. It was something else, Buck. It wasn't you. It wasn't you tonight, and I'm guessing it wasn't you any other time, either. Was it? Did you do all those things?"

"I don't," Bucky said, raising his hands in a helpless gesture, his stunned expression giving way to confusion, and Steve felt an awful tenderness like nothing since he'd pulled Bucky out of Zola's torture chamber. "I don't think--it wasn't me? You're sure it wasn't me this time?"

"It couldn't possibly have been you, Buck," Steve insisted, distantly aware of using the same firm voice of command on Bucky that he'd used on--whatever it was. "And I don't think you broke the mirror, and I don't think you wrecked the fridge, and I definitely don't think you ripped up those pictures just to tape them back together, or broke the picture frames without cutting yourself until you tried to clean them up. I think there's a ghost in that apartment, or something like one. I think it's been playing tricks on you, and I think tonight it got angry when we wouldn't let it play tricks anymore."

"It wasn't me," Bucky said, frowning. "I'm not--it wasn't me. Steve. _It wasn't me._ "

Steve nodded. "It wasn't you, Buck. You didn't do anything wrong, and you're not crazy."

"No one else was there," Bucky said. "I thought it had to--I thought I was remembering wrong. I remember things wrong, I thought it couldn't--"

"You started to tell me, didn't you?" Steve remembered that first night. _It wasn't_ , Bucky had said, but he hadn't been able to finish saying _it wasn't me_. He'd said _I didn't_ , too, just like he'd said about the mirror yesterday. I didn't, I didn't. 

"I'm sorry, Buck," Steve felt helplessly guilty, aware of having left Bucky to suffer with this for days. "I should have realized it couldn't be you."

"It wasn't me," Bucky repeated, sounding surer now, and then he swung sharply back the way they'd come, face settling into determined lines. "It wasn't me, and I'm going to get that thing and I'm gonna--"

Steve grabbed Bucky, hauling him in and holding on tight. "No. Buck, we don't know how to fight that thing--the shield bothered it, maybe, and it doesn't like being yelled at, but we can't see it and we don't know how to kill it. We retreat for now. Tomorrow we get reinforcements, go back and do it right."

"You swear?" Bucky demanded, still leaning against Steve's grip. "Tomorrow? I'm not letting that fucking thing chase me out of my bed one more fucking night."

"Tomorrow, I swear," Steve said, hoping that he could prevail upon Jane Foster to figure out what kind of impossible science would let them kill an invisible ghost playing evil tricks. "Meantime, let's go see if Clint is home."

* * *

Clint answered the door within a couple of minutes after Steve knocked on it, saying, "When you say your apartment is haunted, do you mean, like..."

"Haunted," Steve repeated, wondering if that was some kind of euphemism for something else nowadays and the text he'd sent Clint had been more ambiguous than he intended. There were all those TV shows about trying to find ghosts, he'd thought he understood the terminology, such as it was. "I think there's a ghost, some kind of angry spirit. It doesn't seem to like Bucky."

Clint's gaze shifted past him to Bucky, hovering at his shoulder, and Clint said, "Barnes, hey. Uh. Anyway, I was just trying to figure out what I got--I don't have any special ghost arrows, but it'd have to be iron, right? Or salt somehow? Silver's no good, silver's for other stuff--"

"Clint," Steve interrupted, before Clint could start suggesting fire and explosives. "I want to keep the property damage down at least until we figure out what will work. I was just looking for a place we could spend the rest of the night before we go back there."

"Oh, uh, yeah," Clint looked sideways, obviously evaluating his apartment's uses as anything other than an arsenal for the first time in this conversation. "Yeah, course, just gimme a minute--" He darted away, and then reappeared just as quickly and said, "Sorry, come in, just kind of a mess. Come in."

He disappeared again and Steve stepped inside, Bucky silently shadowing him and turning the locks behind him. Clint was cleaning a pizza box, beer bottles, and other detritus off the coffee table, and Lucky was standing by the couch. He came toward Steve, tail wagging, and then stopped short, posture shifting to wariness, which had to mean he had spotted Bucky. Steve moved a little sideways to clear the line between them, and looked at Bucky, who was wearing almost the exact human equivalent to Lucky's expression, closed off and cautious. They stood there, watching each other and not moving, while Clint went into the kitchen, dumping things there, and then disappeared in the direction of his bedroom. Steve kept still, watching Bucky staring at the dog while the dog stared back. 

"These are, um, clean," Clint announced, coming back in with a pillow, a few folded blankets, and a set of pink sheets with pastel designs printed on them. "They--there's a whole joke thing with Natasha that--anyway, clean," Clint repeated, shoving the bedding into Steve's hands. The words _My Little Pony_ captioned the pastel-colored cartoon animals. "Barnes, gimme a hand with the couch? It folds down."

Bucky moved to follow Clint's casually-given direction, and Lucky backed against Clint's legs, staying protectively between him and Bucky. Clint and Bucky together quickly shifted the couch slightly further from the wall and folded it flat, making a double bed. 

"Uh, sorry, chips," Clint muttered, moving to brush something away from the surface. Lucky squirmed past him to plant himself on the bed, again between Clint and Bucky, and Clint gave no sign of noticing their attention to each other as he said, "Lucky usually sleeps on the couch, but I can take him in my room if he's gonna bother you guys, no big deal."

Bucky crouched and offered his right hand to the dog. Steve tried to move closer casually, though he remembered that Bucky had always liked dogs, and dogs had generally liked Bucky. Clint was also openly watching them now. His shoulders sagged a little when Lucky licked across the hand Bucky was holding out to him and then stepped closer to let Bucky pet him.

"Good dog," Bucky murmured a little rustily, scratching lightly at the dog's chest while Lucky leaned into him, sniffing under his arm and then licking his face. "Yeah, good dog, nice to meet you."

"Natasha talks to him in Russian," Clint offered. "The guys who had him before--they spoke Russian."

Bucky's hand slid up to the dog's shoulder, skritching at the fur. "They did this to him?"

Bucky didn't reach toward the dog's missing eye or any of his other scars, but it was obvious what he meant.

"Yeah," Clint said. "He tried to protect me from them. They didn't like that kind of independent decision-making."

Bucky leaned in closer to the dog, slowly raising his left hand and showing it to him. Lucky licked that too, and Bucky murmured to him in Russian for a while, earning the dog's rapt attention. When Bucky stopped, he looked up at Clint and said, "He can stay out here. We'll be okay."

Clint nodded. "Okay. Uh, if you yell I probably won't hear you, so if you need something--" he waved vaguely at the rest of the apartment. "Help yourself or whatever. Ask Lucky, he's pretty good."

"Thanks, Clint," Steve said, giving as firm a nod as he could over an armful of bedding decorated with purple ponies with long flowing hair. 

"No problem," Clint said, flashing a little smile, and he disappeared into his bedroom. 

Bucky said something quietly to the dog, and he jumped down from the bed and joined Bucky in a perimeter check of the apartment while Steve made up the bed. He sat down on the edge of the bed with his phone and tapped out another text message, this one to Jane Foster. _Do you know anything about how to detect ghosts? I think my apartment has one._

There was no immediate reply, of course--it was late, and he was only halfway certain Jane was in New York and not Asgard right now. He silenced his phone and set it aside, and had stripped down to boxers and an undershirt by the time Bucky came back; Bucky had turned off most of the lights while checking things out with Lucky, so the apartment was nearly dark now. 

Bucky turned off the lamp by the couch and undressed in the dark, sliding under the purple blankets to lie next to Steve. Lucky hopped up after him, and Bucky scooted closer to make room for the dog, though he stopped short of touching. Steve didn't think it was only him who felt the anticipation like something fizzing between them--like touching would strike sparks now. 

But they weren't going to do any more on top of Natasha's pink My Little Pony sheets while sharing a bed with Lucky than they'd done back at SHIELD, and Steve wasn't going to leave Bucky alone even at such close range. He closed the distance, pressing skin to skin all down their sides, thigh to thigh and shoulder to shoulder. "Warm enough?"

"Almost," Bucky murmured. "Could you, um--come here?" Bucky flattened himself against the bed, insinuating his shoulder under Steve's and still not reaching for him. Steve got the idea and turned to lie half on top of Bucky, letting his weight hold him down, feeling the solid warmth of Bucky all the way down his body. Glancing down he saw that Lucky had moved too, resting squarely on Bucky's left leg.

"Like this?" Steve asked. The moment in the middle of the ghost's attack came back to him, the stillness of Bucky's body under his, through the layers of blanket and restraints. Bucky squirmed now, got his right arm free and rested his hand lightly on Steve's hip.

"More?" Bucky said tentatively. 

Steve reached down and caught his hand, pressing it to the bed, and he felt Bucky relax the same way he had in the restraints back at SHIELD, seeming to melt under Steve. 

"You know it wasn't you," Steve said quietly, even while he settled his weight more solidly on top of Bucky. "You're safe."

"I am now," Bucky muttered, and after that he was still.

* * *

Clint and Lucky both insisted on accompanying them when Steve and Bucky headed back to their apartment the next day. Clint brought along the ten arrows he judged most likely to be useful against ghosts. Lucky positioned himself firmly between Bucky and every pedestrian who came within thirty feet of them on the walk back.

Steve had had replies to his text message not only from Jane, but from Tony and Bruce and, unexpectedly, Thor, who Steve had been pretty sure was in Asgard this week. The collective gist of it all seemed to be that they had a lot of ideas about how to detect ghosts and were eager to try them out, so Steve wasn't entirely surprised when they reached their floor of the building and Jane was sitting outside the apartment door with a laptop balanced on one knee and a tablet in her hand, various notebooks and more electronics on the floor around her. 

"Jane?" Steve said. He hadn't realized she was already here, working on the problem. They should have gotten up earlier, but Bucky had stayed asleep late, and Steve hadn't wanted to move and wake him.

"Steve!" Jane's face lit up from a frown of concentration into a bright, excited expression. She jumped up and proceeded to nearly step on everything she didn't almost drop. Steve and Clint both lunged forward, Clint catching the laptop while Steve caught Jane, steadying her on a clear patch of the floor.

Steve glanced back as he released Jane to stand on her own feet and Clint gave her the laptop back. Lucky, either not having met Jane or not considering her suitable company for Bucky, was barring Bucky from coming closer than ten feet. Bucky was looking down at the dog with the same baffled-but-not-unhappy expression on his face that he'd had when Lucky herded him away from unfamiliar joggers and elderly women with bags of groceries on the sidewalk.

"So, great news," Jane announced. "The apartment is _definitely_ haunted--or, well, definitely occupied by a self-organizing, self-motivated energy pattern with the ability to--"

"We agreed to just call it a poltergeist, Foster," Tony's voice piped up from one of the many devices--the tablet in the crook of Jane's arm, Steve thought.

"Right," Jane said. "Right. You definitely have a poltergeist."

"Can you--" Bucky said, and then looked down and muttered something firm in Russian to Lucky, who gave a distinctly disapproving huff but allowed Bucky to walk over to them. "Ma'am, can you see it? It's really there?"

"Jane, this is Bucky Barnes," Steve said, trusting that someone had briefed Jane on what that meant by now. She didn't react to the name, which either meant she already knew and wasn't surprised to see him, or she had no idea. "Buck, this is Dr. Jane Foster." 

He'd already explained Jane's experience using science on stuff that looked like magic; Bucky nodded and offered his hand, and Clint grabbed the laptop and tablet as Jane fumbled them both on the way to shaking Bucky's hand.

"Hi! Yes, we can, we can see it, or--visualize it at least, let me show you--" Jane took the laptop back from Clint again and turned it to show the screen to Bucky. Steve leaned close to him to look: there was a camera feed showing Bucky's bedroom, with something like a huge purple-black inkblot hanging in midair inside, roiling like a thundercloud.

"Dammit," Bucky muttered, and Steve realized that what was visible of Bucky's room through the inkblot--poltergeist--was a mess. Bucky's fingers touched the image of the overturned nightstand, a drift of shredded paper. 

"Is that room yours?" Jane asked. "I'm sorry about your things--that's why we called it a poltergeist, that's--"

"Noisy ghost," Bucky said. "It's German."

"Yes," Jane said. "Right, yes--that's the term for a destructive ghost like this. Has it been doing things like this before now?"

Bucky nodded.

"And did it focus on one person, or a specific location in the apartment?"

"Bucky," Steve said, at the same time Bucky said, "The bedroom."

Clint offered, "It's probably been in the apartment a while," and Steve turned toward him, startled.

"The place was vacant, which at the price they were asking is pretty weird," Clint said. "And that lady who showed us around didn't really want to rent to you but didn't run up the security deposit in case you got the place blown up, which is way weirder--you remember what she said?"

"That I was Captain America," Steve said, the moment finally making sense, weeks later. "And I could probably handle it."

"She knew," Clint said with a nod. "Knew there was something weird about the place, anyway. You should sue your landlord for not disclosing the poltergeist, it's a hell of a lot worse than lead paint. Uh. No laws against it exactly, though, I guess."

Steve nodded. "If it was there already it was avoiding me, which I guess explains why I could chase it off last night. I was here for two weeks alone and it never did anything."

Jane nodded. "It hasn't reacted to any of the bots we sent in, or Tony's suit, with or without Tony inside."

"By the way we let ourselves in," Tony piped up again, before Steve could say anything about that. Jane was so blithely excited that he doubted he could have argued with her anyway; he'd been expecting to have the scientists all over the place. He couldn't really object to them breaking in to help.

"I have actually stayed in the hallway the whole time," Jane said. "And Bruce has just been periodically Skyping in from the tower when the data gets interesting--we didn't think it was a good idea for him to be in the same place with a poltergeist."

"Good call," Steve agreed. "Do you know what we can do about this?"

"More data," Jane said promptly. "We've only been observing it, and it hasn't been very active--that room was already destroyed when we first sent in the cameras and sensors. If you'd be willing to go in and let us see how it reacts..."

Steve had been more or less expecting that; he was no less surprised when he looked over at Bucky and saw him already edging toward the front door, looking grimly determined.

"Buck," Steve said. "Here, you take the shield."

"Does the shield stop it?" Jane demanded.

"Touches it, at least," Steve said, handing it across to Bucky, who slung it on his right arm, left hand resting on the doorknob. "I could feel when I swung it--it was hitting something I couldn't see. Not like an invisible person, but--"

"You could feel a vibration being interrupted by it, maybe?" Jane suggested. "The energy pattern--since it's able to affect macroscopic objects--"

"Since it can hit things, the shield can hit it," Tony interrupted. "And since vibranium stops even very tiny instances of momentum, the shield can probably interrupt or injure this thing. As you were obviously aware, Cap."

Steve rolled his eyes. "Thanks, Tony. After you, Buck." 

Bucky led the way into the apartment, and didn't break stride at the sight of Iron Man sitting on their couch with a blue-green holographic display floating in front of him. He marched straight toward his bedroom with Steve on his heels, Clint and Lucky and Jane all trailing after them. 

The broken door still hung open, splintered and torn half off its hinges, and the chaos inside the room was worse than the dim monochromatic view from Jane's laptop screen. There were dents in the walls, all of Bucky's clothes seemed to have been pulled from the drawers and shredded, and the drift of torn paper from the nightstand merged with the drift of fluff from a gutted pillow.

In the center of it all was a small, spidery robot, which scurried past them out of the room when Bucky stepped inside. 

"Tony," Jane called, but Tony called back, "It's fine, he left all the sensors, we're still rolling."

Bucky picked his way through the mess, glaring around the room as though he were trying to spot the inkblot-thing from Jane's computer. 

"It's kind of--contracting," Jane said from just outside the doorway. "Like it's trying to hide. Too many people, maybe? You said it was usually active when Bucky was alone."

"Yeah," Bucky said, looking around the room again. "Everybody out, I want a crack at it."

"Buck--"

"You can't even close the door behind you," Bucky pointed out, giving Steve a nudge with the flat of the shield. "Go on, I know you're not going far. We just gotta get the thing to come out and say hello."

Steve still hesitated. He'd never liked sending any of his men into danger alone, and he could hardly bear it now with Bucky, even though he wasn't really sending Bucky anywhere. It wasn't even that much danger, now that Bucky knew what he was facing, and Bucky had his shield. The worst thing the poltergeist had really done to Bucky was to make him doubt himself, and that threat was gone now.

For all that, it was an effort for Steve to move away from Bucky's side when Bucky retreated into the innermost corner of the room, near the window. Clint had to pick Lucky up and carry him out of the room, and Steve sympathized with the dog's resistance. His steps dragged as he walked toward the door, and he felt cold--

"Steve, I told you," Bucky said, and Steve looked up to find that he was face to face with Bucky again, near the window. 

Steve shook his head, trying to figure out how he'd gotten so turned around just crossing a room. He felt very cold now, and the room seemed to be getting dark-- _sunset protocol_ , he thought. He could hear Jane yelling, but she sounded far away; that was good, she should stay at a safe distance. The only thing near enough for Steve to make out was Bucky's face, lit by the window.

Bucky looked angry: pale with it, on the verge of doing some kind of serious violence. Steve opened his mouth to apologize for not letting Bucky do this alone like he wanted, and Bucky reached out with his shining left hand to grab Steve, swinging the shield toward him with his right.

Steve closed his eyes and held perfectly still, not flinching away from Bucky. The weight and cold and constriction lifted from him in the same instant as he heard the too-familiar sound of shattering glass.

He opened his eyes to watch the follow-through of Bucky's swing take the shield right through the narrow window, sending a spray of glass out into the air, letting in the sun. The room was bright again, and Steve could breathe.

The shield bounced off the window frame and fell from Bucky's grip as he brought both hands around to grab Steve's shoulders. 

"Steve? Are you okay? Did it hurt you?"

Steve shook his head, belatedly recognizing that the poltergeist had somehow battened on to him--tried to suffocate him before Bucky's eyes. He hauled in a deep breath and raised shaky hands to hold on to Bucky right back.

"I'm fine, Buck," he insisted, though his voice came out sounding choked like the end of one of his asthma attacks. Bucky jerked him into a kiss, and Steve went happily, kissing back until he finally had to take another breath.

It occurred to him then to look around; Clint was smirking, and Lucky, curled over Clint's shoulder, looked pleased. Jane was staring at them with a slightly glazed expression, which she shook off as Steve watched.

"It's gone," she announced. "Bucky, when you swung the shield--you dragged it along and out through the window when you broke it. As soon as it was outside the window, it just... dissipated."

Bucky's grip on Steve tightened, but Steve had enough distance to see the look on his face; Bucky knew what he'd done.

Steve thought he still probably needed to hear it. "It was trapped here, Buck. You set it free."

Steve tugged him close, and Bucky leaned against him, not so much a hug as Bucky letting his weight fall on Steve and hiding his face against Steve's shoulder.

"I changed my mind," Bucky muttered. Steve tilted his head, listening, and Bucky added, "I don't like this room anymore. I'm moving into yours."

"Good," Steve said, sneaking a kiss against Bucky's temple. "It's warmer in there anyway."

Bucky started to laugh, still leaning on Steve. Steve smiled, reveling in that sound, and didn't let go.


End file.
